Erlang/OTP 27 end of life
Erlang/OTP 27 reaches end of life on 20 May 2027. It is currently the oldest OTP release still receiving security patches, and the only supported runtime for a wide band of RabbitMQ 4.x releases — so its end-of-life date is effectively a deadline for those brokers as well.
- End of life
- 20 May 2027
- Released
- May 2024
- Final release
- 27.3.4.17
- Successor
- OTP 28
Date published by Erlang/OTP release policy, cross-checked against endoflife.date. We do not publish a lifecycle date we cannot source.
What actually stops on 20 May 2027
- Security patches for the OTP 27 branch, including TLS, SSH, public_key and crypto
- Any further 27.x releases
- The last supported runtime for RabbitMQ releases whose maximum Erlang version is 27.x
What actually breaks in the upgrade
This date matters more than the OTP 26 one did
When OTP 26 went end of life, RabbitMQ 4.x users could move to 27. When 27 goes, any broker release capped at Erlang 27.x has nowhere to go without a broker upgrade as well. RabbitMQ's own compatibility matrix caps a large band of 4.x releases at 27.x — check yours before May 2027, not after.
Plan the pair, not the runtime
The runtime and the broker move together or not at all. The practical sequence is: confirm which RabbitMQ release you will be on in mid-2027, confirm that release supports OTP 28, and schedule both as one change.
Your options, costed honestly
Including the ones that do not involve buying anything from us.
| Option | What it is | Effort | Cost | Our view |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Move to OTP 28 | Supported to 20 May 2028. | Coordinated with a broker release that supports 28.x | Engineering time | The destination. Requires a recent RabbitMQ 4.x release. |
| OSSeva extended support | Patched OTP 27 builds past the date. | Drop-in | Per cluster | Keeps the current broker/runtime pair patched if the broker cannot move in time. |
What OSSeva does for Erlang/OTP 27
OSSeva patches this line
OSSeva will ship patched OTP 27 builds from the end-of-life date, paired with the RabbitMQ releases that depend on it.
Erlang/OTP extended supportWhat your auditor will say
Requires that system components are protected from known vulnerabilities by installing applicable security patches. A release line with no upstream patch stream cannot meet this by itself, whatever the scanner reports.
Vulnerability identification and remediation. Scanning satisfies identification. Remediation is what fails when the fix does not exist for the line you run.
Erlang/OTP 27: common questions
When does Erlang/OTP 27 reach end of life?
20 May 2027. It was released on 17 May 2024, and the Erlang/OTP team maintains each major release for roughly three years.
Which RabbitMQ versions depend on OTP 27?
RabbitMQ's compatibility matrix lists Erlang 27.x as the maximum supported version for a wide band of 4.x releases. Only the most recent 4.x releases support 28.x. The authoritative table is RabbitMQ's 'Erlang Version Requirements' page.
Still running Erlang/OTP 27?
Tell us the versions and the estate size. We will tell you honestly whether to upgrade or to buy cover — and we say 'upgrade' more often than you would expect.